Uchiha Brotherhood: Memories
by Daastan Go
Summary: Three brothers: Three Memories.


**Uchiha Brotherhood: Memories**

**Disclaimer**: Naruto is Kishimoto's property. I'm not making any money from this story.

**Warning**: Violence and Language.

Dreams: **Sasuke**

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_All men dreamt, but not equally . . ._

Unbidden, a flow of memories from the cracks in the mind. Soggy, wriggling worms embedded into the fissures, they struggled with futility to squeeze through the gaps. Hopeless. Hopeless. His mind was a canvas of many things. A small blot of ink could expand and gain grounds on the porous surface, painting it in a way a painter would to make shapes—clear and beautiful ones.

Agonizing in the heat that radiated from the single towering flame of a candle, the moths circled about on weightless wings; drunk on desire, they only found contentment in burning their wings and bodies. They wriggled, jumped, bounced till bits of the poor-souls stitched to their lesser-bodies got burnt along with them. Their burning left behind ashes on the small table in the orange glow. Come morning, he would just wipe them away with a smooth movement of his hand.

Rain fell on the wooden roof, and the sound of it was soothing, going into his ears and burrowing further in to become another memory he could not give a shape to . . . yet. Air was thickening like a cloying syrup with smells from wet earth, flowers rotten and dead in the mud. There was a faint smell of rot swelling his way—probably from the moss growing in the stone lanterns outside. It was a forgotten place.

He saw a white flash through his lids that invaded the pervasive darkness of sleep, cutting short the chase for a man into the forest of dreams that grew tall and thick from hopes that gathered waters of revenge. He had hidden there and waited, waited for _him_ to come his way so that he would slit his throat with one clean movement of that accursed Anbu blade. A single flying streak of blood soared up into the darkness; and all of his beats, all of his blood gathered on the soil like converging rivers after the rains.

Waters collided with a roaring spectacle: foam losing shape; the underside of the waves, a rising froth. His lips trembled, beats picking up the pace. Blood pooled down his small neck, lips trembling, drying without water and wind. There was a warm and wet sensation upon his shivering breast and thighs. A briny smell of sweat and wet bed-rags invaded the breaths as he drew in deep and hard, fighting his mind and sleep.

A cool wave of wind crashed into his body and took away the smell that was metallic and rotten. There was no pain, just fear of him and brutality for him that had drilled into his bones to tremble through and move into the sinews, which clove onto the frame of bones and made it dance. His throat spasmed: red in the monster's eyes was unnerving, unreal, frightening, like he was seeing it _all_ over again.

He left him convulsing there, gazing at him in a manner that was impassive, as he tumbled over backwards; eyes transfixed by his, red flaring in anger to fight a battle he knew he had to win.

Earth-shaking, blood-chilling shudder filled the room, and his eyes closed there and snapped open here before he hit the ground. _A dream. It was just a dream_! he reasoned with his heart whilst it cooled from trembling to trust and found a _right_ rhythm that soothed his spirit.

A shadow wavered overhead, sticking to the sturdy beams and ceiling. He turned his eyes and saw the candle reduced to a pool of yellow wax that hardened on the rough wooden veneer—its wick stuck in a sludge of wax. He smelt a lingering trace of it under all that smell, but it would soon vanish.

Shadows came to everywhere now. Red expanded into his eyes to become a new vision; and he strained his head up to look at the open window and watch crooked branches sway in front of the sky that wore and absorbed the twisting and vanishing lightning. Trembling away, shadows ran and sank behind the set of drawers and squeezed into the cracks as another flash invaded their territory.

Another cool draft hit his senses, and he gulped, almost tasting the sweetness of flowers on his tongue. From outside came crunching sounds, and he sat up and looked through the wall to see _all_ colours in the darkness: it was _just_ the wind that swirled everything and spun a distorted yarn of chakras. It had won its battle to topple over an old tree; a network of wiry roots was protruding out of the ground now.

His eyes lingered there for the moment; then they located his sword: it was still leaning against the wall—a quiet and cherished instrument. It had not spoken a word in his dreams. Standing up, he felt his body twitch all over. The dream was powerful, and in dreams, all Men gave over to fear that affected their spirits.

He did not pick up the sword. No, he just looked at it and examined the young aspect of his white face and dishevelled black hair stuck to the sweaty cheeks. It felt so long ago when he had wept in the night's deepest part as a wee boy, but he was a boy no more; youth had touched his body, moulded it to smell and feel and look . . . different.

And _this_ body was just a tired trick of nature, an age-old trick that amused no one. He had grown and gained a kind of strength he never thought possible: lightning sizzled about his fist and fire danced from his lips; he mounted up with fleshy wings; slithering snakes swayed in the power of his gaze; his blade was mighty and wind-cutting; he moved, swift and fast and silent—a true Shinobi!

But what was a Shinobi without honour? And _he _ruined it, his own flesh and blood, washed it away with the blood of his kin. Their souls accused him—faceless Men hurting his pride. He had to cut him down, beat the life out of him, shame him the way _he_ had their honour.

In dreams, he ran and here, he chased—a hunter and the hunted. And he raised a smile and grabbed a quick breath. Tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow . . .

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Caelum:** Itachi**

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_A hammer, chisel, and heart . . ._

Day drank the night; it drank itself into a delirious state of stupor. One swig, two swigs, and the shade grew darker across the eternal firmament every eye could see till the clumsy, mechanized bodies would breathe their last.

A burin in a deft hand and the stars were left like holes in the burnt metal. The divine hand was quick. One swift touch and clouds gave way to reveal the vast expanse of a dark horizon, bearing down upon the moors beneath, bearing down upon Man.

He could not see a thing beyond the bend. He did not possess the inexplicable power of the eyes loaded with the colour of martyrs; now was not his time to claim and wield it for the exhibition of passions. He had little to claim. His soul had not yet borne the burden of a sure kind of denial. So quietly he sat, listening to the sounds and heeding the air and the autumn leaves sighing like the babe in his arms. The air was moist with good tidings of rain, and smells lay over its silence like heavy hands.

He rose up to his small feet and clutched the small sleeping thing in his hands—it meant the world to him. He looked down to gaze upon the soft lashes fluttering in sleep. Did he dream, too? Such small and innocent things to dream of—such pretty little things to see. The chisel went in deep, and metal was his heart at the receiving end. Dust in the eyes of men. Empty graves in the night. The fields became their eternal home!

How vast was his sky, and how deep did the burin wound that eternal mortal in him? Shuddering, shaking, spasming in the grip of Time, he was tainted now: his soul, embalmed with the odour of the battles and heavy promises of a father. It was changed. He could feel it shift and draw something out of the deep of his shadow. He had assumed its darkness in a thoughtless chase towards salvation.

And deeper it went, tearing through the make-believe yarns of a good morrow. He bled and threw blood of false promises against the lonely companion of his chamber. It was done, the metamorphosis of a boy into what he would become; but the babe slept . . . happy in the pretty chambers of his prettier dreams . . .

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Swords: **Madara**

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_To wield the sword and all its memories . . . without fear._

_Clean, clean, clean that sword till it attains that shine . . . _from the hearts as though it had never touched a neck, cloven a piece of flesh, cut open skin—an obfuscation of his spirit: a broken mask and a crack filled with gouts of blood that cooled between the fissures no eye could see. Sharingan saw where sight failed, a tongue that put out foul-mouthed lies. It was routine. They were all so accustomed to this act, this play.

Stitched up by the fine fingers of the divine, he hid away unspoken pleas and half-hearted promises to appease the specter that shuddered at the thoughts of vacant eyes and crumpled bodies out of a fleeting pretense that it would rue its past . . . an eternal circle of rebirths inside the cradles of new wombs.

A bland simulacrum of what once _was_ in the pure water, forgotten till the last breaths. An intercession would echo out the speechless words from his heart that it, too, had felt the tides of change; it just fell in love with life's natural contortions . . .

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**The End**


End file.
